During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided typical double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
